No matter, he reassures himself, moth holes are inevitable, even in the best of broadlooms.
But to be truthful, all those patches and darns are telling. Everything is telling on this man. He does not disguise well.
Yet he deems himself genius.
But if he is a genius, why is he not recognized? Why is he so poor, so destitute, he must beg to eat? Why does society reject him?
A man of his vast talents?
His name is Edgar Allan Poe, although he loathes the Allan part, and eschews it. He prefers to be known simply as Edgar Poe. Or Edgar A. Poe. Or E.A. Poe. Or Eddie Poe. Or even E.A.P., as in his first published work.
His darling little wife, his Sissy, his Virginia, calls him “Brother,” or “Buddy.” Sissy’s mother, Muddie, his aunt Maria Clemm (he and Sissy are first cousins), calls him Eddie or “dearest Eddie.” His stepfather, the despised John Allan, the Allan of Edgar Allan Poe, called him Ned.
He has no recollection of what his real father, the disappeared actor David Poe (Muddie’s brother), called him.
To his dead mother, Eliza Poe, née Arnold, “the Little Actress,” “America’s Sweetheart,” famous for her stage role as Little Pickle in The Spoiled Child, he seems to remember he was “darling.”
He tells himself it is his lack of tenacity. His rampant temerity. His passion. His emotion. The unrest in his bosom. The burrowing fear.
Stop!
He disgusts himself. His indulgence with self-pity is reprehensible.
What has he done to deserve this fate? He must stop this. He must. After all, everything could change. A letter has arrived. He has an offer. Some much-needed funds.
He has been invited by the family of John C. Colt, a vague acquaintance, to travel to New York City to write a final portrait of their young penitent, sitting in his jail cell, awaiting death. The letter signed by family patriarch Colonel Samuel Colt himself.
John Colt, “Handsome John,” “Homicide Colt,” “Colt the Homicide,” christened in the public prints “failed poet,” “doomed poet,” “poète maudit,” held in the Tombs, the New York House of Detention, for the murder of his publisher, Samuel Adams.
Poe could not help but smile to himself. He would have liked to do the same: Murder his publishers! Kill Billy Burton. Eviscerate James Harper.
Mr. Poe lives with his family, his women, in Quakerdom, in the City of Brotherly Love, in a small, neat, but only partially completed house on the rural edge of the city sprawl, on a quiet ordinary street named for a tree and a scourge: Locust.
His aunt Muddie, his cousin Sissy, the only ones left who love him.
Sissy, married to him when she had just turned thirteen; he twenty-six, twice her age.
Sissy so sick now, he has very nearly abandoned all hope. Yet with each accession of the disorder that plagues her, he loves her more dearly. He feels all the agonies of her death even as he watches her cling to her life with ever more desperation.
He admits to being constitutionally sensitive, nervous to a very unusual degree.
He rids himself of this thought. Here is opportunity to redeem himself, opportunity afforded by Colonel Colt and his family on behalf of the unfortunate John.
He kisses Muddie and Sissy goodbye. They kiss him back, say, “God’s speed, dearest Eddie.” He leaves the meager house in the middle of the day, a dark and brooding figure beneath a dark and brooding sky. He fingers the few coins remaining in his pants pocket, hopes there are enough for the rail ticket, the ferry across the river Styx.
The good Colonel Colt has forwarded him ten dollars as an advance against the completion of the word portrait of his brother John. He has given the lion’s share of the funds to Muddie for food and medicine for Sissy.
He has discovered an elixir he calls “Jew beer.” A strange Hebrew fellow down the road makes it in his barn. It is the only medicament Poe has found that causes Sissy improvement.
Darling Virginia, what she does for him! So infirm, her health so fragile, although she remained plump and round-faced, her voice so sweet still when she rises to sing his favorite song, “Come, Rest in This Bosom.”
For all the world he looks beaten, even before he starts on his journey. He fingers his one joy. With him in their canvas case, now stuffed in his greatcoat pocket, he carries his augments, his talismans: his steel pen, the nib worn perfectly through use to the slant of his hand, his pocket notebook, his precious ink in its heavy corked ceramic pot.
With his instruction Sissy concocted the brew. She is so proud to help him with his work. The tint, a careful mixture of red and black, heavy to the red, a single drop of black added, two, three, so the black dye drifts in the red, transforms the crimson into the color of blood.
The pocket notebook, buff pages cut meticulously by her, perfectly folded, bound with leather thong, the smooth paper protected by a buttery-soft black-dyed goatskin-leather cover.
He buoys himself. He tells himself once more the idea to go to New York is a good one. After all, Gotham is the literary capital of America, and E.A.P. no small American literary figure.
Adding t to Poe, he reminds himself, makes poet.
Truth be told, in Philadelphia nothing has met his expectation. Nothing has been satisfactory. How many tales has he published? Sixty? How many poems? Reviews? Yet he has nothing. For how many weeks must his family be forced to eat bread and molasses and nothing more? How many times can he expect his dearest Muddie to show staunch face at the Christian mission seeking charity?
For a year he was employed as editor of Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, but some of those stints with drinking had poisoned the minds of detractors and ended his job, although he assured friends that temperance was not an issue, that intemperance was as far removed from his habits as day from night.
The true issue, if you want to know, was the feral stupidity of the publisher Billy Burton.
Bilious Billy, he called him.
Bilious Billy of the title page.
Bilious Billy the buffoon!
Once the man had been a successful comic actor. He had come from England with great success and fanfare. That was before he had incredibly taken on the mistaken mantle of publisher and—even more laughable—writer!
What made the fool think himself capable of such pretense?
Haggard!
Billy Burton—this man—had the audacity to warn him, to warn Poe—Poe the Poet—that he must tone down his reviews, to rid himself of his ill feelings toward his brother authors.
No matter. Monetary need rewards its own humiliation.
“The troubles of the world have given a morbid tone to your feelings,” Burton had lectured Poe upon his firing. “It is your duty to discourage such outpour. Take some exercise, man! Rouse your energies. Care!”
The ignorance of him! The arrogance!
Upon reviewing his recently published “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” the Philadelphia Inquirer had proclaimed: “This tale proves Mr. Poe a man of genius.”
Mere puffery, you might say. But his peers, the people who know, his fellow literati, respect him. Fear him.
Fear his mind. Fear his tongue. Fear his wit. Fear his pen.
How many times had Poe explained to Burton that he worked from a mental